Valli Fall 2011 RTW - model Codie Young
Valli Fall 2011 RWT - model Caterina Ravaglia
Giambattista Valli is the latest couturier to provide collections for customers who love high fashion but don’t have the budget to do more than window shop it.
The first haute couturier to go downtown was Matthew Williamson with their Diffusion Line available online at My Wardrobe. However with prices of £413 for a dress and near £500 for a coat Matthew Williamson is clearly far to ensconced in his high fashion bubble to have any sense of what most people’s budget can afford at the most prosperous of times, let alone what they can manage in an extended economic downturn with their credit cards being paid down not maxed up.
Next up was Karl Lagerfield with their collection for Macy’s. And perhaps surprisingly Lagerfield has a much better sense of what is affordable than Williamson – their ‘Lagerfield for Impulse’ collection available in store then online from August 31 has prices starting at £30 through to the £100 marker – I am converting from the US $ – Lagerfield in effect competing with Debenhams and Marks and Spencer – and Matalan, almost!
And Valli follow in his high-fashion footsteps also with Macy’s as part of their Impulse designer series. The prices are in the same price range as the Lagerfield ones. Macy’s are to be congratulated on this further venture and clearly have a much better understanding of the everyday budgets than My Wardrobe do.
According to Valli we can expect lace, brocade and tulle in bold prints and vibrant colours.
A lot of their 2011 Fall Ready To Wear collection was black and white via grey but there were occasional outbursts of pink, red and yellow.
I have included photographs of such pieces in this post.
Will it be marked down versions of them that will be filling up Macy’s racks and shelves? Here’s hoping.
Valli Fall 2011 RTW - model Anais Pouliot
Related articles
- Macy’s Is On A Roll: Announces Collabs With Anna Dello Russo & Giambattista Valli (thegloss.com)
- Get the Look: Giambattista Valli’s Roman Home (casasugar.com)
- Giambattista Valli Couture Fall 2011 (fashionslop.wordpress.com)
- Fall 2011 Couture: Giambattista Valli (chellibeans.wordpress.com)
- Swamped! (nawalrmili.wordpress.com)
The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29 is inevitably going to influence the choice of wedding dresses for the rest of this year and indeed years to come, in the same way that the wedding dress of Lady Diana in her marriage to Prince Charles on July 29, 1981, influenced wedding dress design for much of the rest of the 1980′s. Even if the designers wanted to move on, their customers did not.
Diana’s dress cost £9000 and its train was 8 metres long. The 8 metre train of that dress may not be exceeded but the cost of £9000 most certainly will be. 
A thankless task potentially as she flies the flag of Haute Couture against Gok Wan’s creative re-constructing of High Street wares in these times of tightly controlled purse strings. And though more often than not the vanquished in the catwalk showdowns she always responds in good grace and spirit.
